Castaneda and "don Juan's first student,"
Joanie Barker, at a wedding in 1962
(click on picture for full-size image)

December 25, 1925 - Castaneda born in Cajamarca,
Peru, son of César Arana Burungaray, a watchmaker and goldsmith, and Susana
Castañeda Novoa.

Mid 1940s ?Castaneda attends Public School 91
and San Ramon High School for three years in Cajamarca, but doesn’t graduate.
(Per de Mille, The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies, 1990
ed., p. 362.)

1948 ?The Arana family moves to Lima, Peru.
Castaneda graduates from the Colegio Nacional de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in
Lima, and then enters Bellas Artes, the national fine arts school of Peru. (de
Mille p. 362.) [Jose Bracamonte, one of Castaneda’s friends and fellow
students at arts school, recalls his former friend Castaneda as "witty,
imaginative, cheerful—a big liar and a real friend." (Time Magazine
March 5, 1973 cover story, p.44.)]

1949 –The Arana family is living in a
third-floor apartment in the Porvenir District, on the outskirts of Lima. (de
Mille, p. 362.)

1950 ?Susana Castaneda de Arana dies.
Castaneda refuses to attend the funeral, locks himself in his room for three
days without eating, and when he finally comes out announces he is leaving home.
(de Mille, p. 362.)

1950 ?Castaneda rents an apartment with two
fellow art students. Another fellow student, Victor Delfin, later describes
Castaneda as follows to journalist Cesar Levano: "He was a wonderful liar
[el tipo mas fabuloso para mentir]. A very capable fellow, likable and rather
mysterious. A first-class seducer [un seductor de primera linea]. I remember the
girls used to spend the morning waiting around for him at the Bellas Artes."
(de Mille, pp. 362-364.) His friend Bracamonte further describes him as
"always thinking up unlikely stories—tremendous, beautiful things. . . .
. He was always talking about Cajamarca, but oddly never talked about his
parents." (Id. P. 364.)

1951 ? Castaneda meets Dolores, a young
Chinese-Peruvian girl. He proposes marriage and she becomes pregnant. She tells
him about her pregnancy about a month before he leaves the country. He continues
to write her letters until 1955. (de Mille, p. 383.)

September 10, 1951 - Castaneda sets forth from
Callao, Peru, on board the S.S. Yavari, a small ship carrying 16 other Peruvian
citizen passengers bound for San Francisco. (per ship manifest for S.S. Yavari,
dated 9/23/51) [Castaneda does not tell family members he
is leaving, although he later writes to his cousin Lucia, describing an
imaginary military career and hinting at mental or physical wounds. He also
later writes a couple of brief letters to his father, including one that says,
"I’m going on a very long journey. Don’t be surprised if you learn
nothing more about me." (de Mille p. 364-5.)]

September 23, 1951 - Castaneda enters U.S. in
San Francisco, California, as César Arana, bound for Richmond, CA, with two
pieces of luggage and Peruvian Passport No. 34477 (per ship manifest for S.S.
Yavari, dated 9/23/51).

Summer 1955 ?Castaneda enrolls in Los Angeles
Community College (on Vermont, south of Hollywood Blvd.) as Carlos Castaneda.
(In his first two years there, he takes courses in journalism, science,
literature, and two creative writing classes with Vernon King.) (Per A Magical Journey
p. 36; and
March 5, 1973 Time Magazine cover story.)

December 1955 ?Castaneda’s Costa Rican
friend Lydette Maduro brings Castaneda with her to Margaret Runyan’s apartment
to have her try on two dresses Lydette’s mother is making for Margaret.
Margaret and Castaneda meet again a few days later when Margaret goes to Maduro’s
to pick up the finished dresses and brings a book for Castaneda, in case he
happens to be there. (A Magical Journey pp. 32-3.)

1956 ?Castaneda lives in a sparsely furnished
apartment on Madison Street in Hollywood.

June 2, 1956 - Castaneda calls up Margaret
Runyan for the first time, to see if he can stop by to show her some of his
paintings. (A Magical Journey p. 35; Runyan, "My Husband Carlos
Castaneda," in February 1975 issue of Fate: True Stories of the Strange
and Unknown.)

Fall 1956 ?Castaneda and Margaret Runyan are
very much an item, spending nights in his apartment or the apartment she shared
with her aunt. (Per A Magical Journey p. 56.) Castaneda is already
inventing a new "personal history" too, telling Margaret that he was
born in Italy on Christmas Day in 1931, the son of a 16-year-old girl attending
finishing school in Switzerland and a professor who was on a world tour when he
met the girl (by alex cillo). He also claimed his mother’s sister came to Italy soon after he
was born to bring him to live at the family farm near Sao Paulo, Brazil, where
he allegedly attended schools until he was old enough to go to art school in
Italy. He also claimed to have entered the U.S. in New York, and to have
attended art schools in Montreal and New York. (A Magical Journey pp.
40-1.) He also bogusly asserted that he had served in the U.S. army in Spain,
and claimed to have once traveled with a band of gypsies and to have married a
gypsy girl. (Runyan’s article in Fate.)

March 1957 - Margaret calls up the only Sue
Childress in the telephone book, who has never heard of Castaneda, but who
nonetheless becomes Margaret’s close friend. (A Magical Journey p. 47.)
[Both of them later write short articles about Castaneda for the February 1975
issue of Fate: True Stories of the Strange and Unknown.]

April 26, 1957 - Carlos Arana Castaneda files
Petition
for Naturalization No. 199531 with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
His address at the time is 1128 N. New Hampshire, Apt. 4, LA; his occupation is
commercial artist; he lists his birthdate and place as 12/25/1925 in Cajamarca,
Peru; he describes his features as brown eyes, black hair, 5?", 140
pounds, a citizen of Peru and not married. He says that he entered under the
name Carlos Cesar Salvador Arana Castaneda. His Alien Registration No. was 8 108
676. The witnesses to his petition are Antonio Fuentes, artist, at 931 N. Hoover
Ave., who declares that he has known Castaneda since March 1955; and Ivan
Culver, commercial artist, at 9528 Haney St., Rivera, CA, who declares he has
known Castaneda since March 1952. The Petition was granted on June 21, 1957.

Fall 1957 ?Castaneda writes a term paper on
Aldous Huxley for his second year English class at LACC, having become
interested in occult topics after reading Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and
its account of mescaline research. (A Magical Journey pp. 51-54.)

1958 ?Castaneda works at the Mattel Toy
Company plant on Rosecrans Ave. and Hawthorne. (A Magical Journey p. 69.)
Castaneda moves into a boarding house on Adams Ave. He also starts writing
poetry and short stories, with one of his poems winning first place in a writing
contest sponsored by the school newspaper. He and Margaret attend a lot of
movies. (A Magical Journey p. 70-71.)

December 1958 ?Castaneda rents a small house
on Cherokee Ave. in Hollywood. He makes Christmas cards that depict Father Time
and an hourglass. (A Magical Journey p. 71.)

Early 1959 ?Castaneda takes a room on the
second floor of the Marietta Apartments on Vermont Street, across from the LACC
campus. (A Magical Journey p. 72.)

June 19, 1959 ?Castaneda graduates from LACC
with an Associate of Arts degree in psychology. (See
graduation picture.)

September 1959 - Castaneda enrolls at UCLA for
the first time (with transfer credits from LACC). He also works at a silk
screening plant.

Thanksgiving 1959 ?Castaneda cooks for a
small group of friends, including LACC students Allen Morrison (Castaneda’s
best friend at the time) and Byron Deore. A discussion about religions
supposedly prompts Margaret to suggest: "If I came to you and I told you
that I’d found the ultimate way of life and that I could tell you exactly how
to do it, it would be very hard for you to accept. But if I said to you that I’ve
got a mysterious teacher who has let me in on some great mysteries, then it’s
more interesting . . . It’s much easier to accept." (A Magical Journey
pp. 58-59.)

January 27, 1960 - Carlos Aranha Castaneda
marries Margaret Evelyn Runyan in Tlaquiltenango, Mexico. (As Margaret tells it,
the sudden marriage came about as a result of Castaneda’s jealousy over
Margaret dating a Middle Eastern businessman, who tells Castaneda that he would
marry Margaret as soon as his divorce is final. Castaneda declares, "Over
my dead body. No one is going to marry her but me!" After a brief talk that
same day, he and Margaret "got into Carlos’s black Volkswagen and headed
for Tijuana." (A Magical Journey pp. 80-81.) [They
must have gone considerably beyond Tijuana, however, because Tlaquiltenango, the
city listed on their marriage certificate, is in the state of Morelos, south of
Mexico City.]

Late January 1960 ?Castaneda moves in with
Margaret at 823 South Detroit Street. (A Magical Journey p. 81.)

Late January - June 1960 ?Castaneda takes a class on
"Methods in Field Archaeology" taught by Profs. McCusick and Clement Meighan.
[Gloria Garvin Sun, who later worked as
Meighan's editorial assistant, characterizes this as a class on shamanism, and
Meighan as "something of a shaman himself."] Margaret Runyan
reports that Meighan promised students an "A" on their term paper if
they actually interviewed an Indian for the project. (A Magical Journey
p. 82.)

Summer 1960 - Mary Joan Barker ("Joanie),
whom Castaneda later describes to the Sunday group as "don Juan's first
student," becomes involved with Castaneda. [Douglass
Price-Williams, a UCLA professor and friend of Castaneda (and, for a time in the early '70's,
Florinda's dissertation adviser) remembers Joanie being first employed as a librarian at UCLA
sometime in the summer of 1960. Douglass believes the two met up in July or
August of 1960 (i.e., around the time of Castaneda’s separation from Margaret
Runyan). Joanie was soon introducing and referring to Castaneda as her
boyfriend, and, later, as her "fiancee."]

It is presumed that, early in their relationship, Joanie took Castaneda for
a visit to the Morongo Indian Reservation, near her childhood home in Banning,
California. Margaret notes that, at this time, "Carlos began leaving for
hours at a time, and then days . . . . At first, I thought he had found another
woman, but he denied that. Carlos said that he was making trips into the desert
to study the use of medicinal plants by the Indians." (A Magical Journey
p. 81.) She also reports that, for his paper for Meighan, Castaneda
"worked with a Cahuilla on a reservation near Palm Springs, and then went
out on the Colorado River and worked with a few Indians there. . . . .
Ultimately, he found one man who related a great deal of information about
Jimson weed (Datura inoxia) and it was that information that served as
the basis of Carlos?undergraduate paper . . . ."

Meighan recalled,
regarding this 1960 paper: "His informant knew a great deal about Datura,
which was a drug used in initiating ceremonies by some California groups, but
had presumed by me and I think most other anthropologists to have passed out of
the picture 40 or 50 years ago. So he found an informant who still actually knew
something about this and still had used it." The paper includes references
to the plant’s four heads, their different purposes, the significance of the
roots, the cooking process and the ritual of preparation, all information that
Castaneda supposedly later learns from don Juan on visits between August 23 and
Sept. 10, 1961, as described in The Teachings of Don Juan. At the time,
Meighan praised the paper (one of only three involving an Indian informant
turned in by the large class) and suggested it added a great deal to the
academic literature. (A Magical Journey pp. 83-85 and 91.)

July 1960 ?Castaneda moves his typewriter,
books and sculpting materials out of the apartment he shares with Margaret,
returning to the Marietta Apartments on Madison Ave. (A Magical Journey
p. 93.)

Summer 1960 ?Castaneda supposedly meets don
Juan in the Greyhound bus station in Nogales, Arizona. (See, e.g., The
Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality and The Active Side of
Infinity.)

September 1960 - Castaneda and Margaret Runyan
separate [per complaint filed in Margaret’s West Virginia divorce proceeding].
(They continue to see each other frequently, however, until Margaret leaves Los
Angeles in 1966.)

Fall 1960 - W.L. Davis introduces Castaneda and
Margaret to Adrian Gerritsen at a meeting. A short time later, Castaneda asks
Gerritsen to father a child for him. Gerritsen responds that it "would have
to be agreeable with Margaret." Not long after, the three (Castaneda,
Margaret and Gerritsen) meet at the Star of India Restaurant near Vermont in
Hollywood. Gerritsen agrees to do the deed. He and Margaret subsequently
"did have an affair and this affair produced the desired results for
Carlos." According to Gerritsen, "He was happy and said so to
me." [From Adrian Gerritsen’s letter to Margaret in November 1998, filed
in support of C.J. Castaneda’s declaration in the probate of Castaneda’s
will.] [This contradicts Margaret’s earlier account, in A
Magical Journey, however, where she writes: "Having met a slender blond
businessman named Adrian Gerritsen, I pressed Carlos for a divorce. He refused.
But in the weeks that followed our separation, I hammered away and finally,
after much harping was successful in getting Carlos to agree." A Magical
Journey p. 93. In her book, Margaret relates that Castaneda drives her back
to Mexico for a quick divorce. A couple of years later, however, Castaneda
reveals that the Mexican divorce was a charade "to appease me while he did
his field work." p. 94. Margaret is extremely upset to find out that she is
still married to Castaneda, "and it took nearly a year of visits by Carlos
at my new apartment on Doheny Drive, before I began to feel differently about
it." p. 95. Castaneda develops a strong attachment to C.J., and insists
that Margaret sign documents with the Dept. of Public Health asserting that
Castaneda is the legal father. Id. A new birth certificate is then issued to
that effect.]

June 1961 ?Castaneda allegedly begins to
serve his "apprenticeship" with don Juan. On June 23, 1961, Castaneda
asks don Juan to "teach me about peyote." On June 25, 1961, don Juan
instructs Castaneda to find a "power spot" on the floor of don Juan’s
porch. (Per The Teachings of Don Juan.)

August 5-7, 1961 ?Castaneda allegedly
participates with don Juan in a peyote mitote. (Per The Teachings of Don Juan.)

August 17-23, 1961 ?Castaneda has additional
meetings with don Juan, who begins to teach him about datura [a
subject Castaneda had already written a paper about over a year before] (Per
The Teachings of Don Juan.)